(no subject)
Aug. 6th, 2010 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yagathaiRecent comments by Seth McFarlane, creator and writer of Family Guy, have caused controversy in circles where such controversy is wont to occur. You can read about it in more detail here, but the short of it is that one of his straight male characters threw up after he learned that he'd had sex with a post-op male-to-female transsexual. McFarlane was criticized for saying that he didn't think that this was an out-of-the-ordinary reaction for your average straight dude.
I got into a bit of an ugly scrum over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
redstapler's LJ, where what I thought was a productive discussion with redstapler quickly got derailed by your usual-type flailers and shriekers accusing me of being the devil, so I was hoping maybe we could have a more civil discussion of the topic here.
It remains to be seen if that's possible.
My points, briefly, are that:
It is not unreasonable for a straight male in modern Western culture to be distressed upon learning that someone he thought was a ciswoman, that is to say a woman that was born a woman, with woman bits, who was acculturated as a woman was actually a transwoman, that is to say a woman that was born a man, with man parts, acculturated as a man who later got top and bottom surgery and is now a woman*.
It is, further, wrong for a transperson not to notify their partner that they are in fact trans, and not cis, if they can reasonably assume that the fact that they're trans might affect their partner's decision to consent to sex. In other words, their partner has to be given an opportunity for informed consent. Without such a notification, their partner is incapable of informed consent and that's wrong, because sex without informed consent is a form of rape -- in fact, it's one of the primary definitions of rape.
The arguments against me, as best I can understand them, are:
A transperson should never have to reveal their trans status because they are constantly in danger of being transbashed, that is to say, violently assaulted because of their transsexual status. Concern for their personal safety overrides any other considerations, including their obligation to inform a potential sexual partner.
If you have sex with a transperson and you can't tell that they're trans, then what difference does it make? You never need to know, and they never need to tell you. No harm, no foul.
yagathai is a racist and a transphobe and a homophobe and a terrible human being**.
Discuss.
*Yes, there may be ways to be a transwoman that don't involve getting a whole bunch of surgery, but this was the scenario as presented in the TV show and it's the one I'm going with here.
**For the record, I think you could make a legitimate case for only one of those four things.
I got into a bit of an ugly scrum over at
redstapler's LJ, where what I thought was a productive discussion with redstapler quickly got derailed by your usual-type flailers and shriekers accusing me of being the devil, so I was hoping maybe we could have a more civil discussion of the topic here.It remains to be seen if that's possible.
My points, briefly, are that:
It is not unreasonable for a straight male in modern Western culture to be distressed upon learning that someone he thought was a ciswoman, that is to say a woman that was born a woman, with woman bits, who was acculturated as a woman was actually a transwoman, that is to say a woman that was born a man, with man parts, acculturated as a man who later got top and bottom surgery and is now a woman*.
It is, further, wrong for a transperson not to notify their partner that they are in fact trans, and not cis, if they can reasonably assume that the fact that they're trans might affect their partner's decision to consent to sex. In other words, their partner has to be given an opportunity for informed consent. Without such a notification, their partner is incapable of informed consent and that's wrong, because sex without informed consent is a form of rape -- in fact, it's one of the primary definitions of rape.
The arguments against me, as best I can understand them, are:
A transperson should never have to reveal their trans status because they are constantly in danger of being transbashed, that is to say, violently assaulted because of their transsexual status. Concern for their personal safety overrides any other considerations, including their obligation to inform a potential sexual partner.
If you have sex with a transperson and you can't tell that they're trans, then what difference does it make? You never need to know, and they never need to tell you. No harm, no foul.
yagathai is a racist and a transphobe and a homophobe and a terrible human being**.Discuss.
*Yes, there may be ways to be a transwoman that don't involve getting a whole bunch of surgery, but this was the scenario as presented in the TV show and it's the one I'm going with here.
**For the record, I think you could make a legitimate case for only one of those four things.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 03:51 am (UTC)Also I don't buy that barfing is a common reaction to something you don't like having happened, at least as common as movies and TV would have us believe. Shit gets real, I don't spontaneously ralph, and I've never seen anyone do so.
But straight up? Family Guy is offensive all the time on every level and is not funny. Color me not shocked that they were not funny and offensive again.
I'm still thrown by it was the dog? Having sex with someone's dad? What?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 04:09 am (UTC)Brian is treated inconsistently based on the comedy needs of the episode. Sometimes he's treated like a dog, but in recent seasons they've been treating him like a human most of the time, with the occasional surreal gag that points out the fact that he's a dog. But he drinks martinis, has human girlfriends, drives a car, wrote a crappy pretentious novel that got panned by the New Yorker, etc. Basically anytime they need a straight man for a romance subplot, or a male character that isn't a buffoon like Chris or Peter, they use Brian the dog.
Within the fiction of the show, it's not at all unusual for the dog to be having sex with a human woman.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 04:13 am (UTC)